NEOTOKYO° is a first person shooter that aims to provide a visceral & realistic combat experience in a rich futuristic setting. NEOTOKYO° takes place in and around a fictionalized Tokyo approximately 30 years in the future. Mankind has begun to fuse with technology. Government and corporate corruption have transformed Tokyo into a deadly dystopian nightmare. After a near-successful military coup by ranking members of Jinrai, the National Security Force (NSF) is formed - answering directly to the Prime Minister, it's mission is to investigate and eliminate all threats to Japan, both abroad and at home. The initial core of the NSF is made from an exodus from within the intelligence branch of the military. With this betrayal begins the war in the shadows between the NSF and Jinrai.

Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson from Valve visited my workplace in New Zealand during their recent trip to Australia. They were visiting with my boss. I managed to get a photo with Gabe during their tour of the facility. Both Gabe and Erik were super nice, and really chill.

Here's some pics of the speech bubble I made, and the cardboard Jitte (actually a print mounted to foamcore and then cut from the outline).

The whole photo op was like a few seconds of chit chat and then a quick picture, so not much to report, but I did give them each a NEOTOKYO OST. So hopefully they listened to that while on their flight back to the states, and didn't just chuck it in the nearest trash bin.

Their treatment of players and modders? Valve is always very attentive to their players, constantly patching, releasing content, and functioning around what players want the most not what they think will sell the most. Also, how the hell do they treat their modders poorly? How many other games do you know of (or engines rather) that you can create a full conversion mod for with fair ease with all of the tutorials and sdk tools... You have not played L4D2 yet have you? I personally probably will not be buying it until the price goes down but you don't need to be a ****. One thing you think is a poor choice and all of the developers are ****?

L4D Team doesn't suck. They made L4D. Plus I really enjoyed L4D2 while at E3. How dare you badmouth hardworking people who bring us quality content on the same level as Valve. Oh wait, your still stuck up.

Epic, indeed.
By the way Epic Games got with their Unreal Engine also quite a modding community, there are also many total conversions, some of them turned into full price games (or how you would call it. Oh and sorry for not answering PierreOfTheFrench directly, i wanted to use the word Epic for a [poor] Transition)
But both, the Source and Unreal Engine are good, with many great Mods (Good for us, great games for free :D).

don't forget the age of half life, and half life 2. half life was ground breaking when it was new, and half life 2 was pretty highly detailed in its release as well. personally its unfortunate that everything in source looks mediocre, but 3rd party content pushes to change that. though VALVe themseves won't really go to the limits of what source can handle - as we can tell from L4D & L4D2 - but the small groups that are doing it for free in our spare time try to make things look as best as is possible with the limitations of source.
this is not to say source isn't a great engine.

Did he recognize your mod? I would have been really stoked. Gabe is an amazing person and responsible for a lot of great things that go on at Valve. He's the 1990's burger eating garage game programmer in all of us. <3

Why would you write "NT sux"? Self Ironie, or is that Valve's official standpoint?
What was the purpose of their visit? Is Valve going into film business and did the visual style of "District 9" inspire them to take a go at a Half-Life movie?
I imagine Half-Life could become a cool movie, if the right people do it, so no complaints from me, this time.